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Dragoslav Ilic
Robbing - useful feature of bee colony 16000 Leskovac S. Zlatanovica 35 Robbing, that frightful word that makes beekeepers’
hair stand on end. Hard battles have been fought and special tactics have been
devised, but as a rule, the battle was always lost. Perhaps the reason lies in
the wrong tactics or delayed beginning of the battle. Many beekeepers seldom visit their bee yards. When they do go
to see them after a longer period of time, they are astonished by the sight. Bee
colonies, left in the best condition, healthy, strong and filled with honey, do
not exist any longer. All the indications show that robbing was committed.
Therefore the culprit is known; its name is robbing. Everyone who is seriously into beekeeping could see how
robbing destroyed the mating nooks and swarms. All this creates an ugly and
dreadful picture about robbing. However, is this picture true or false? A bee flying around a hive knows exactly about the state of
the colony in that beehive. It has a scanner, which gives it a precise picture
about it. That scanner is one of its most important organs of perceptions, a
sense of smell - antennas. A bee has an extraordinary developed a sense of smel.
It distinguishes a lot of smells and even in small concentrations. If antennas
were removed, a bee would become unable to live. A sense of smell is essential
for discovering the source of food. A possible source of food might be someone
else’s beehive as well. However, not every beehive is a suitable source of
food. Bee colonies that live in each beehive will not allow, even at the risk of
their lives, some stranger to carry away the food, which means life to them and
which was made by working day and night. From such a hive the bees around it
will not even try to take food because it would mean their death penalty. But
sometimes the bees estimate that the bees inside the hive do not need honey, and
that they can take it. Which bee colonies can they rob? Or, what indicates that
they can do that? The attacked colonies always have some deficiency. As a rule,
it is the queen. Bees in the hive are also aware of lack of the queen, due to
the absence of pheromones, but so are the bees from the other bee colonies. A
queenless colony that has just come out of the wiinter is doomed. In the absence
of the queen, there is no brood, no teeming of young bees. The old bees, due to
their age, disappear every day. The strenght of the colony diminishes by the
day, and its defenses get progressively weaker. When the bees outside sense that
they can breech the defensive cordon, they attack, penetrate the hive and take
all the honey away. If robbing colony did not have any honey in its hive, the
honey that was brought would mean the continuation of life. Therefore, nothing
exeptional has happened because robbing means taking away from someone that
cannot be saved and giving to someone whose life depends on it. Regulated by
nature in an extraordinary way, robbing is biologicaly useful and justified. It
means the survival of species in nature. In the bee yard, it means fewer dead
colonies due to the lack of food. If there were no robbing, the colonies having
food but destined for destruction would die, while the colonies which are
biologically sound but without food would die too. Without robbing, the number
of destroyed colonies would be greater both in nature and in the bee yard. The following three experiments can demonstrate that the
absence of the queen in the beehive is the only important cause of robbing: We carry out the colony ‘A’ swarming in the same hive in
which it was located by separating the hive into the section ‘A’ and the
section ‘B’. The queen that was already there remains in the section ‘A’
but we put another mated queen in the section ‘B’. After a certain period of
time when both colonies are stabilised and when the foraging bees chose the
colony, we draw all the bees and the queen out but leaving the whole quantity of
honey. It is to be expected that the robbing will be committed in the section
‘B’. However, it does not happen that way. Robbing was not committed in the
section ‘B’. What kind of invisible force keeps the honey in the section
‘B’? That force is the smell of pheromones from the section ‘A’,
deceiving the bees arround the hive so that they get the impression that there
is also a queen with a normal colony in the section ‘B’. Experiment no. 2 We leave only the queen, around a hundred of ageing bees and
honey in the hive in which used to be a good, strong colony while we draw all
the rest out, including the bees and the brood. Will robbing be committed in
this hive? It certainly will not. Does the reason for it lie in the defensive
power of the remaining bees or is something else in question? Defensive power of a hundred bees is almost negligible, but
the defensive power of pheromones of the queen is enormous. That will be to a
greater extent shown by the experiment no. 3 which follows on the experiment no.
2. Experiment no. 3 We leave several thousands of ageing bees and honey in the
hive wherein a good, strong colony used to live. We draw the queen, all the
remaining bees and the brood out. Later on robbing will take place: the hive
will be attacked, the bees killed and the honey taken away. How is it possible
that several thousands bees did not succeed in defending themselves, their hive
and the honey in it, while around a hundred of bees and the queen in the
experiment no. 2 could accomplish it successfully. Food means survival for all living creatures; so it does for
the bees, and that is why they carry it away from the other hives into their own
hive. The aim of robbing is not to kill, but to transfer the food. If the host
does not try to stop it, there will be no killing but only taking away of food.
The experiment no. 4. will confirm it. Experiment no. 4 We separate a couple of hundreds of young bees and young
unmated queen in the hive with honey. In order to provoke robbing, we feed them
with sugary syrup. The robbing will occur with the attack of this hive, taking
all honey away but without killing the bees and the queen. Young bees, like
other young creatures, are fearful and will not fight the attacking bees, but
will only withdraw aside. Anyway, there will be neither fighting nor battle and
so there will be no dead bees. In the experiment no. 3 the robbing causes killing of all
ageing bees because they fight the invaders. Dead bees can be found on both
sides, so that a larger number of dead bees is found after robbing in comparison
to their number in the hive before the robbing. One or several colonies can participate in robbing. The bees
participating in robbing are even well organized. They place ostensible
guarding; i.e. each bee on a hive’s entrance is on guard and does not allow
bees from colonies other than their own to enter the hive. Therefore, only one
colony can take part in robbing and it will be the one that first discovered the
source of food. The following experiment proves it. Experiment no. 5 We place the beehive with honey but without bees in the
middle of the bee yard. After robbing took place, we shall not be able to find a
single dead bee. It means that the robbing was committed by only one colony. Bees from one or several colonies can take part in robbing.
It will be shown by the following experiment. Experiment no. 6 We place a beehive with honey but without bees in the bee
yard. In contrast to the previous experiment where there was a single entrance
to hive and where the first robbing colony succeeded in establishing control of
the entry, in this experiment we shall make possible for the bees to enter from
all sides. This has been done in order to prevent the first robbing colony to
have a complete control of the entrance into the hive. We can find quite a large
number of dead bees on the bottom of thr board. That points out that several
colonies took part in robbing and also that there was fighting and killing among
them. It could be concluded from all the above mentioned that the
robbing was only committed against the colonies in destruction. At this moment,
a question could be raised that if it is the case why the robbing attacks the
mating nooks since they are not the colonies in destruction but the ones in
formation. The answer is very simple because the bees also view them as a colony
in extinction: they have no queen, they are without bees of all generation, and
they lack the brood in all phases. There are two critical moments the robbing
occurs in the life of a bee colony during the year concerning food. The first
moment is the period of coming out from winter when stored food supplies in the
hive have been consumed and nature still cannot offer new ones. The other
critical moment is the end of summer and the beginning of autumn. That is the
last moment when it is necessary to provide sufficient food supplies for the
forthcoming winter which is rather difficult because the sources of food in
nature run dry. The robbing is only the last act in the process of colony
destruction. If the robbing was committed in March, destruction of the colony
must have started in October of the previous year when the colony entered the
winter with the old queen. Therefore, we should not only see the end event, the
robbing, but we should also pay attention to the facts that had been happening
to the attacked colony in the previous period. The bees are not to be blamed for the robbing in the bee
yard. The main and the only responsible culprit is always the beekeeper who,
owing to delayed and inappropriate application of measures of precaution,
contributes and provokes the occurence of robbing in the bee yard. Colonies that are destined for destruction will be destroyed
but those with a chance of surviving should not be destroyed - robbing will save
them. The only real measure against robbing in the bee yard is to
rear and breed biologically sound bee colonies throughout the year. Nature has not bestowed upon the bee colony any needless
features. Robbing is, therefore, necessary and useful. |
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